Design Culture

August 03, 2015

Digital disruption to the media began early in the days of the Internet throwing every media company into a crisis mode. Now this is happening again - this time, even homepage viewership is on the decline. I am not saying this is the death of the webpage, having a webpage or content site is simply not enough. Content is now distributed and stories are best shared and read through new platforms such as Facebook’s Instant Articles, Apple News, Buzzfeed, the Starbucks mobile app or through Reddit, a bulletin board platform that doesn’t sound like something new since the early days of the Internet. It is an entertainment, social network, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links, making it essentially a crowd sourced news channel.

Today all Millennials are gravitating to social networks and news media sites and assume everything is free. This generation, (confident, always connected, ramen-eating, ultra short attention span, impecunious, underemployed, some over-educated, gaming obsessed, and so forth) millennials are not only the largest generation in US and world history, they’re on the cusp of commanding the largest influence and voice of our consumer culture. They expect technology to work and simply-work and if it doesn’t, you will have a big problem. They are tech-loving consumers but have unrealistic expectations that technology needs to be seamless (thanks to Apple) with a new standard of intuitiveness. They align themselves with the latest technology and will try anything new and cool and quick to critic and quick to find workaround. Computers don't crash and smart phones should be able to handle everything.

Millennials don’t watch TV (and others are following) and they sleep with their cell phones next to them perhaps 9 out of 10. Probably 10 out of 10 have no landlines and no interest in watching TV. Smartphone is the most important tool in their lives and when people are saying the smartphone is becoming a commodity. It is not. How can it be when it is the most important tool or digital companion? Smartphones are not doing well because the expectation is rising and Smartphones have replaced the cigarette (good thing) as things to do in those odd moments, lonely moments or simply filling up every minute of downtime. It is replacing newspaper, cigarette, chewing gum, calculator, wallet and many other tools…. hookups, meet-ups or start-ups.

There is no online or offline, social is social and other opinions matter. They get along well with their parents and even have friendship with parents, which didn’t happen in the older generation. They actually influence what products their parents buy, what apps their parents use and where to travel. They have a “we can fix it together” mindset and “we can change it all” attitude. That’s why they love working for start-ups and game changing companies with a purpose.

More millennials than non-millennials integrate their beliefs and causes into their choice of companies to support, their purchases, and their day-to-day interactions. They put the money where the mouth is. Millennials also care about what’s genuine and authentic. They are looking for somewhere between a retro aesthetic and a search for honesty and authenticity. Something advertisers are still struggling with. For many millennials, they prefer to climb the Himalayas then corporate ladder. They are raised to believe they can do whatever they want and they are hitting the realities as they enter the society. Millennials are hard to catch. Media companies are not getting it. You need to work harder.

November 15, 2014

The world is suddenly obsessed with smart technologies and this time around it seems unstoppable. Our everyday electrical and mechanical industrial object will now be occupied and ran by software and connected to the cloud. It also means each object (as small as some smoke detectors and as large as automobiles) will now be equipped with tons of sensors and can be able to adapt to different environment and individual needs.

It is essential that the next wave of industrial revolution will make us more efficient and empowered (and more human I hope), and data will be at the heart of this revolution. That's another big conversation. All the Nest, GoPro and Beats received multi-billion-dollar valuations through private investments or acquisitions and everyone is wondering why these hardware companies suddenly in such high demand. Because hardware and software are going through different commodity lifecycles and now software is becoming a commodity. They used to be difficult and expensive to develop and even to deploy, that that is changing. It is hard for software company to get into hardware much as hardware companies struggle to get into software. Hardware cannot be done by a few geeks in the basement, and involves massive R&D and specialists including megatronics engineers, electrical engineers, industrial designers, wireless engineers and usually takes a longer time to develop.

Software you can fix it with a download, and hardware you can’t. They are massive supply chain challenges when it comes to logistics and component supplies. The value of firms who can marry software and hardware will have a competitive advantage over their competitors. Essentially everything we use today will be fitted with some sensors, processors perhaps, and may be a screen and will recarnate and become of Internet of Things. For the last three decades, software engineering has advanced to a state that sophisticated codes can be embedded into machines. And the availability of cheap sensors and super powerful processors is powering this cycle of data revolution. All of a sudden, software, hardware and communications infrastructure are advancing us into a new era. Old world manufacturing + low cost computer processing + ubligious computing + cloud = smart new world and many cool products.

It sounds like the Apple story all over again, does it? The hardware and software integration capability of Apple, the ecosystem, the brand and user experience are now not only inspiring consumer gadgets company, not it’s influence is beyond its own industry. I know this is an overused story, but he Apple influence is still here, and perhaps it will be here for a long time even when the company stop creating great stuff one day. Microsoft ex-CEO Ballmer saw that coming in 2012 in a letter to shareholders. "It's important to recognize a fundamental shift under way in our business, we see ourselves as a devices and services company." Microsoft had the strategy right but couldn’t execute it fully with the exception of X-Box. Microsoft’s future revenue will still be coming in from software and it isn't going to change anytime soon. The transformation from software to hardware is harder that you think.

The idea that hardware is now the new software is pretty real. There is a business model implication here. These hardwares are mostly priced between $100 to $250 and they a gateway and great way to sell software. We are seeing a revival of hardware and this time, it is hardware first and software and then date on the cloud, it will bring new technological advances in cloud-powered hardware that boosts productivity, efficiency and manifests as beautifully designed objects that fit into our hands and homes.

June 01, 2014

How do breakthroughs happen? Can they be engineered? Are they pure luck? Or are they the result of skills that we can develop and improve upon over time? Along with the fear of the unknown and the pressure to make it happen, breakthroughs come with an incredible sense of possibility and satisfaction.

The experience of uncovering a breakthrough is exhilarating and hard to explain. It’s a sense of not knowing exactly where I am going, but knowing that I am going somewhere. Here’s my secrets to achieving breakthroughs:

Preserve the “Me”. The world we're living in today seems to be a completely different one from 10 or 20 years ago and a crazie one. Sometimes I wonder if the world is really changing that fast at a break-neck pace. There is a notion that if you can’t change the world you should change the way you look at it, but I don’t like the idea of changing myself according to the world and adapting to it. The central core of what’s “me” contains beliefs that we’ve built up over the years and a value system that provides us with perspectives on the world and forms the grey scale of my personality. Black and white only exists in film, photography and my Prada suit; seeing the world in black and white is terribly dangerous. The person who views things only in black and white will always be miserable or unsuccessful in whatever they pursue. That’s not and never was the rule of the universe. Sticking to your core does not necessarily mean you are not open to the world. It means you open the world to “you” and everything you experience adds one more layer of sophistication to the “you” and heightens your awareness and sense of being. Any personal breakthrough need not give away or suppress the “you.” What you experience every day should make a beter “you.” Breakthroughs require the “you” in “you.”

Anticipate and Leverage Moments. Most breakthroughs don’t happen through excessive rationalization or planning. In fact, almost all breakthroughs are sparked by “moments.” This is one of the things I teach people about looking for breakthroughs. The process of finding any breakthrough – whether in business, technology or design – often involves immersing oneself in large amounts of data and extensive debate and the synthesis of complex information. Most people fail to see the moments when they happen or fail to capture them. I started working to facilitate these moments a long time ago, making them happen more easily and more often. How I ask questions and how I push people to their limits (as I do with my staff) is one way that I try to help them to experience moments. I feel bad for sometimes being seen as critical and demanding, but that’s how I get myself and others to create those moments.

Expand Awareness through Emotions. There are so many myths about emotions. We often associate them with extreme cases where we overreact, when they prevent us from making the right decision or make us irrational pursuing things that we want. This is all true, but emotions also have a positive side if you know recognize and respond to them. Emotions are our inner sensors at work, sending us weak signals from the outside. They trigger how we expand the operating parameters of our cognition, help us take in more detailed information, hold multiple ideas in our minds at once, and ascribe meaning to the things, people and events in our lives.

Imagineering as Daily Ritual. Unless you’re in the business of producing film, animation, video games or other highly creative outputs you most likely don’t have a need to use imagination in your daily work. But imagination is not a tool we can call up on demand; we need to practice using it every day in order to maintain our ability to imagine. Imagination is a major part of how we frame and solve problems. Much like yoga, tai chi or voice training, imagining requires that we put in practice time in order to expand our ability. Applied imagination (or imagineering) can increase the number of creative options available for specific problems that we’re trying to solve and help with tasks like ideation. Rather than focusing on developing ideas or how to solve a problem, Imagineering is about rapidly and randomly envisioning what might be, what could be, and what couldn’t be. It's very easy to compare creativity and knowledge in an abstract, metaphorical sense – but we know that our imagination is developed from the knowledge we gain in the experiences of our daily lives and works by employing that information subconsciously until it’s ready to break through into awareness.

Practice Design of Meanings. Try to design a breakthrough project or pilot activity for yourself as an experiment. Some breakthroughs are sparked by eureka moments based on insights – but far more are based on design. Design-driven innovation is spurred by thinking about possible breakthrough features, meanings and product languages that could emerge in the future. This cannot be done by talking to consumers or looking at current user behaviors. Consumers can’t really imagine radical futures, as they are anchored and invested in the current one; thus they are not helpful in anticipating possible radical changes in new product meanings. Big breakthroughs don’t necessarily come from disruptive applications or advanced functions; sometimes it’s new meanings that shift the universe. Think about how every one of the everyday objects that we see around our home can be transformed: instead of being simply functional, consider how to turn them into symbolic objects of irony, desire and affection.

January 20, 2014

There were lots of interesting debates about "new thinking around innovation and future development of enterprises in China.” With almost three decades of sustained economic growth and orchestrated government support for advance technology research resulted in a large talent pool (but still not large enough) and many are well trained by foreign univerisities and companies.

China has made impressive achievement in many areas including network technologies, article physics, structural biology, genomics, human space exploration, supercomputing and high-speed rail which is part of China's centrally designed and state-led innovation model. Moving towards a more innovative economy is one of the main challenges facing China's President Xi Jinping. He understands what is important for China to sustain prosperity and development. China has developed a range of policies to create "indigenous innovation" to reduce dependence on foreign countries for advanced technologies including government procurement, competing technology standards, and requiring technology transfer from multinational corporations in return for access to Chinese market. Is this enough?

At the same time there is more proof that the western style of management is becoming more and more less effective and sometimes even becoming a barrier to innovation reform. To achieve China’s vision and development goal, China must produce and support innovators whose ideas and execution will enable China to create greater and broader economic wealth beyond manufacturing, infrastructure and real estate development. For most companies in China I've talked to, they are a long way from understanding what it takes to make innovation real beyond basic R&D and to compete outside of its demestic market.

China’s innovation cannot just rely on progress in science and technology but in both education and research; the most crucial piece is to be able to own the core technologies and design applications (let me stress - technology alone is not enough, without design), which China is still reliant on foreign companies. The most important strategy is to acquire innovation skills as a core capability so China’s companies will be less dependent on foreign IP and can create ecosystem of technologies that local companies can build upon.

Innovation goes beyond idea generation but also commercialization. It requires a new level of thinking and cross-industries and collaborative-competition that is currently not happening in China. Currently, the model of business education doesn’t deliver on innovation training as they basically modeled after the west.

Most of today's Western style of management and business problem-solving is primarily made up of prescriptive remedies still very much rooted in decades-old conceptual frameworks, developed in the 80’s as a response to pressing events then. They not only have long outlived their usefulness for Fortune 500s, they were not designed to handle today’s unprecedented pace of continuous disruption nor are they irrelevant when applying in emerging economic power such as China which has a very different historical, political and cultural values as well as a unique operating environment and a well deserved national aspirations.

My guess is that 80% of what they teach in business schools MBA’s curriculum today are not applicable for managers in China. Despite managers in China being thirsty for management development training, the net results are less to be desired. In short, we are beyond the point of questioning the effectiveness of western management practices; we need a China approach to management. Or perhaps China should take on the role to reinvent management.

November 18, 2013

The party at Idea Couture London office last week was a fantastic event. Get to meet many young talented people there and looking forward to work with them on projects. My work takes me around the world and it is hard to get to know everyone in different offices. I enjoy talking to creative people from creative engineers to designers. And I have a very different idea of what "creative" people means. Idea Couture is a creative powerhose and it is creativity in the deepest and most systematic sense, looking at challenges from new perspectives but achor in a highly logical manner. That's our creative algorithm and it is rooted in every IC office.

Design educators take note. Design schools have built up an expectation that they can equip students to tackle complex problems through the power of creativity alone. They can’t. They don’t. And they continue to fool themselves with four big myths about creativity.

The first myth is that creativity and design are inseparable. Here, we have led ourselves down a garden path of consensus where many of us believe that because designers are designers they are creative. But design is not creativity manifested, and creativity is not the exclusive to the design mind. One can be creative without having any design skills or sensibility, and there are many skilled designers who utterly lack in creativity. Design doesn't = creatiivty. It needs creativity.

The second myth is that analytical people are generally not creative people. Here, in subscribing to the popular oversimplification of human complexity that there are right-brain thinkers and left-brain thinkers, we assume that those of us who lean towards analysis, process, logic and science are – admit it – a little uninspired. As anyone who understands what goes into big and small leaps of science knows, this is rubbish. The analytic and the creative can, and often do, live side by side in the same brain.

The third myth is that, when it comes to design, creativity must be unbound from the laws, structures and processes of the day-to-day world. Bound up in the long-standing mythology of the artist as a visionary or hero who must be free to do what he/she – and he/she alone – does best, this can sometimes be little more than an excuse for the fact that the artist or visionary lacks the ability to apply his creativity beyond his own imagination. Nowhere is this more prevalent than at the intersection of business and design where many creative people prove themselves incapable or unwilling to grasp (and design for) the realities of what a company does and how it operates.

The fourth and final myth is that which surrounds the recent and very popular theme of ‘design for social change’. While the output of many such projects is little more than a poster and a campaign, not an actual solution, most of us would agree that such work starts with the best of intentions. Here, as in the third myth, the challenge is that designers are generally not educationally or experientially equipped to identify the social or cultural genesis of a problem and are typically blind-sided by the economics of an issue. The result is that many develop ideas (not really solutions) that are irrelevant, unsustainable and, in some cases, lead to further problems. They were one minute inspiration and not sustainable change.

If I was to start a design school (not sure I would) from scratch tomorrow, the program would be based on Movement, Intuition, Structure and Complexity. These would be the “subjects” that would become the permanent vocabulary of every graduating student for one simple reason: we need to train a new breed of professionals that can live up to the promise of how design can change the world. Only by balancing the ‘general’ with the ‘specific’, the ‘whole’ with the ‘part’, the ‘abstract’ with the ‘concrete’, and the ‘indefinite’ with the ‘definite’ can we prepare young people for the increasingly competitive job market, the stakes of what it means to be a citizen of design in the global community, and the what it means to be a human being who enjoys deeper forms of beauty, meaning and purpose while understanding economics.

August 19, 2013

“Design Thinking” has gone beyond fashionable in the design industry, but now quickly getting into management circles and even boardrooms. B-schools are tapping into this new trend and but many are yet to understand what it means and its applications. The idea of management that we teach in B-schools was originally designed for a set of very different kind of needs - managing repetitive tasks, improving economic efficiency and labor productivity and maximizing scale. Today the needs expand to managing complexity and extreme uncertainty that is part of our everyday environment and this is where “Design Thinking” can change management forever.

I am having lots of conversation with B-schools Deans and professors to explore how we can bring this into MBA core.
My new book “Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation” is now officially available this week and it has been 15 months in the making and based on extensive research and field practices. Many traditional proven and popular management tools and technique are being questioned for their validity and my book explains why.

My book shows how “Design Thinking” can be used to deal with some of the most common challenges in business today from competing for the future to managing change. This is not an update on our management operating system; this is about rearchitecture of our business designs. Today every business needs a new operating system. And even the world needs a new operating system.
“Design Thinking” brings strategic agility and empathy at its core. That demands a totally different level of thinking.

All concepts in my book can be effectively applied in the context of managing radical innovation as well as business model redesign. For over eight years, I have been advancing these ideas into the practice of strategic management; this book is a great opportunity to share them. Let's get beyond the overly simplified views of "Design Thinking" and make that part of any professional practices. These ideas transformed companies and individuals and I hope it can do the same for you. Please share your thoughts.

April 07, 2013

The Facebook phone is here.The Facebook phone rumor has been around for a while and it is a
matter of time it becomes real. I think they should have done it earlier and should have larger
ambition other than just trying to design a ‘home’ for Android. Home sounds like a PaaS personalization
tool and not sure how many FB users will want this. FB see the potential for
them but it is hardly a threat for others but Android might modify their terms so
this won’t happen again in the future.

With FB already commands more than 20% share of people's
time on mobile devices (excluding Instagram), it can further boost FB mobile
usage particular for younger users. Will FB take over 20% of all Android
phones, we have yet to find out. For now, FB is pretty convinced that people will want a
phone designed around it and perhaps with additional hardware feature that is
uniquely FB.

FB should really be
making its own phone, it is reported that they are working with mobile
chipmaker Spreadtrum to pre-optimize its software for the cheapest Android
handsets. It is hard to compete on the high end with Samsung and Apple, if Facebook prodcued its own low end phone, though, it could create a new business model in the mobile market and FB could
negotiate better data plans for their members or partially subsidize them with
advertising. This is not easy for Facebook to jump in and get carriers to agree to
sell its phone. For me, I see no reason
to have a FB phone.

For Microsoft, they are waiting to see how well Nokia's
Lumia phones Windows Phone 8x and 8s sell before making a strategic decision to
enter the smartphone market on its own. I think it makes perfect sense for them to
decide to play in the hardware space. They have made that decision with
Surface tablets. It is a matter of time that they will play in this smartphone
market, they risk becoming irrelevant as market is switching into different computing format.

Microsoft is thinking
dual-screen and has applied to patent a dual-screen phone interface. One screen
for device interface and the other as a monitor and is detachable. NEC is
making one and is marketing them as the "best cloud device," the dual-screen
Android from NEC handset also has a super powered battery to keep both displays running.

It will be interesting to see what can we do with two screens. We're already designing dualscreen user experience models and I think this is catch on. The mobile industry is changing faster than anyone could have imagined and the interface paradigms there have been static. Here is the opportunity for us to introduce new ways of interacting with others and new ways these machines can understand what we need.

March 02, 2013

You want to be more creative? Sometimes it is not about trying
harder to act creative. I see a lot of people trying too hard. Sometimes it’s not just about giving one the space to be
creative. Sometimes it is just being
strategic. And sometimes it means apply a healthy dosage of common sense.

Strategic creativity
is more valuable than creativity.
Not everyone needs to be “creative” the same way as other think you
should be “creative”. It is not about ideas. It is an attitude. Everyone can
live a creative life and be creative how he/she sees live.
It seems that when creative people (artist) with certain carft try to solve a problem or achieve a certain end result, particularly when the goal is related to their craft or specialized skills, they have an advantage. But when the problem is too big for them, it takes strategic creativity on a more sophisticated level.

Creativity is in such demand today and it is not the years of schooling or what art schools you attend. The word “Creatives” is used in advertising world to describe
those who work on creating advertising campaign or providing craft for
production. People in these roles
like to believe that they are more creative than others. It is not the case at all.

Creativity is not a job title,
crafts, capability or skills. Creativity is state of mind, which you can use in
everything you see and do. People should live a creative life rather being creative. By
living a creative life and having that state of mind, one naturally becomes
creative. Creative is independent of discipline, culture and tools.

So how do you live a creative life?
Here are three specific ways that can help you to live a creative life.

Be Bipolar. A little madness yield great artists, designers,
inventors and scientists. The evidence is growing for a significant link
between bipolar disorder and creative temperament and achievements. Seeing the
extremes of both sides of anything help you to understand the spectrum of
choices and options. Go to places
you don’t normally go and use that space. It is not available for everyone.

Be Foolish. Be lazy. Everywhere people are telling you
rules and the right ways to do things.
Be acting silly and even lazy can sometimes help you to see easy paths
to complex problems. Agatha Christie wrote, “I don't think necessity is the
mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly
also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”

Be Strategic. Most people see this as the opposite of
creative. This is total rubbish. Being strategic can also be creative. And
being strategic you need to be very creative. The best strategists are often
most creative people who can apply creativity in the context of a specific
problem. They don’t’ dress in a funny way or even trying to act like artists.
They may wear suits and even a tie, but they could also be the super creative types.

Creativity is not just about “aha” moments or interesting ways to look
at things. Creativity is about putting empathy to work. Creativity is not about
perfection. Weisberg and Csikszentmihalyi both talked the importance of motivation in creative performance. A notion of Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of creative flow is that reaching peak performance is “autotelic”, meaning it is enjoyable for its own sake. So the ‘creative person’ is simply someone who enjoys creativity and therefore does it all the time, even with no reasons and gains nothing from it. Someone just want to be creative all the time. That's different from peope who are strategic in applying creativity. Nothing good of bad. Just two very diffferent creative types.

Creativity
is not about opening new doors because something said creativity people have no
doors and doors are for those without imagination.

January 09, 2013

In Vegas for the CES, it is exhausting. I skipped last
year but didn’t feel I missed anything. I was not a fan of 3D TV and not
impressed with the Microsoft / Ford automobile operating system. It has been a
crazy first week this Jan with lots of management stuff to get done as well as
finalizing the March issue of MISC magazine to print. It is the GADGET issue.
Very happy with it and couldn’t wait to see it out in bookstores and newsstands
in eight weeks.

Here I am prepared to be exposed to all
kinds of crazy gadgets once I set foot on CES, as usual many are useless and
hopeless. There is distinction between the two. “Useless” is product that does
not answer to any customer unmet needs, it is just novelty. “Hopeless” is me-too
product that tries to compete on price. I hate to think how many tablets will
end up going to the landfill. With no Apple presence, it is like everyone here is try to compete with Apple. It is the world against Apple.

Many of these consumer electronic gadgets solve our problems. Problems that we
know and problems that we know we have. Often they create new ones while solving the old ones.
Humans are supposed to be good at problem solving but we’ve become so reliant
on the gadgets in our lives that there are problems we find ourselves unable to
solve without them. Sometime in the not too distant future gadgets will not
just respond to our commands, they will be able to understand our mood, read
our minds and learn our preferences.

When I was sitting at Starbucks, my mind was trying to visually
map all those data exchanges between Macs, tablets, mobile devices, watches, cameras, and
people. The visual just blows my mind and we forgot how crazy and connected we
are.

Never before we have that much access (and speed) to information and
knowledge at the palm of our hands and we can almost (yes almost) live our
lives without thinking. We tether our brains and other senses to our smart devices and relying on
them to tell us when we’re sad, confused, tired, hungry, where to go and what
to buy. How far are we before we’re ready to raise the white flag and formally “surrender” to our cognitive
independence? What about humanity?

We are living in a technology-addled age, our gadgets are
necessity. I wonder what’s the average number of apps for iPhone users? And how
many of them they rely on in their everyday lives? We are becoming lazy. We do
less walking because we have cars. Now we do less thinking because we have smart
gadgets. Your brain is like a muscle. If you stop using your
cognitive skills and instead rely on gadgets to do the thinking for you, in
time, those skills will start to atrophy. For me, I used to be able to do complicated calculation
looking at tons of numbers and within a few minutes come to sense of what it is
telling me. Now I can’t even add up a restaurant bill without a calculator (app).
I used to be able to map out the route mentally when I drive from one place to
another, now I just listen to the command of my GPS. I used to be able to spell
and thanks to auto correction, my spelling is worst than when I was 12.

May be the next innovation is not a product. Just like
we’re try gin to think of ways to encourage people to walk or bike to make us
more healthier and do less damage to our environment, we should be thinking
about applying design thinking to help us to use our brain more – and use less
gadgets. What does computational humanity means? Time to get back to the show.

September 11, 2012

Came back from beautiful Thailand speaking at the Design Is Opportunity event. Everyone is thinking about design not only as producing great products but also as a competitive advantage for creating new industries and as comparative advantage for countries. Met many people who are passionate in design and design thinking.

There are 16
remote controls that sit on my coffee table at home, and I have no idea what they
are all for. It’s enough to make one think twice about turning on their phone, buying
a new camera or downloading a new app. Looking around my surroundings, I’m
struck with how overly complicated life is. Products that are supposed to simplify
our lives now require a steep learning curve and possibly a special diploma.

Which leads me to
wonder whether the concept of ‘usability’ means anything to designers and
manufacturers anymore. Are they not concerned with alienating a large part of
the market with their constant stream of complexities and change? Are they so
sure that we’ll loyally follow them to the ends of the earth, syncing our lives
to their products? Only a handful of companies are doing it right.

Usability springs
out of a discipline called Human Factors, which has deep roots in military
strategy. Crucial during wartime, when soldiers needed to design tactics to
easily and accurately protect themselves while defeating their enemies. In the
most intense and critical moment of one’s life, human factors mean the
difference between survival and death. Many are confused over the difference between Industrial Designers (ID) and Design Engineers (DE), let alone between Industrial Designers and Human Factors Engineers (HF).

Industrial Design (ID) is an applied art whereby the aesthetics and usability of products may be improved. Depending which school of design you come from, you can be an artist or a designer that follows most if not all of the 10 principles of good design from Dieter Rams. Design Engineering (DE) on the other hand is a discipline that creates and transforms ideas into a product definition that deliver on customer needs.

The key difference between the two is: ID is an applied art, whereas DE is a discipline. This means that industrial designers' job is to dream up products and design engineers' job is to make it work. Dieter Rams is both a indistrial designer, artist and human factor engineer. He wants his product to be usefil, elegant and easy to use. Sometimes an indsutrial designer performs all three roles.

How did human factors come into design? WWII launched the
starting point for electronic systems with user interfaces that were controlled
by human operators. At the time, industrial psychologists like John Flanagan
discovered that reducing the amount of clutter, such as buttons, switches and
knobs on the control panels of aircrafts could dramatically improve operator
performance. New models became increasingly streamlined, such as the P-51
Mustang fighter, “one of the conflict’s most successful and recognizable
aircrafts.”

Aviation and weapons
designers must consider a myriad of human factors, including how to prevent
accidental firing, decrease use fatigue, withstand climate conditions, and
equipment maintenance, to name just a few. Perhaps the most important factors
that guide design involve the human condition. In short, the design must take
into account those that will operate the equipment. The degree of automation
and ease of maneuverability also play a role. Usability is all about
transcending human limitations to achieve the upper hand.

The concept
expanded when computers came on the scene. The evolution of the computer, from
military technology to personal use, spanned many decades but it finally
reached the hands of the public. For the first time, employees could have
personal computers, but during this first introduction there were little to no instructions
or guides. Despite this, software designers continued to assume that their
users were knowledgeable and competent enough to understand the technical lingo
and structure of operating systems to not only use the systems but also
troubleshoot errors. Such implicit assumptions proved unacceptable, especially if
computers were to achieve mainstream success. Today, we expect them to
accommodate our limitations, intuition and even emotions.

Adapted from an article Usability Beyond
Simplicity from the upcoming Sept issue of MISC- The Simplicity Issue which be available in newstand around the world in the third week of Sept 2012.

February 20, 2012

What is Design Thinking? Because of the word “design” and many automatically associate it with the craft of design or design as a profession. Actually it is less to do with “design” and more with “system”. There are many ways to define "design thinking" and this list is not exhaustive:

A way to instill customer-centricity and empathy

A framework for exploration and experimentation

An approach to sense-making and problem solving

A methodology to foster exploration and experimentation

A design buzzword to tell you a designer can do more than design

A management buzzword sold as the “next” strategic tool

A marketing slogan or tag line

A self-gratifying term for those who think they are creative

The term “design thinkers” implies that designers are craftsmen and not thinkers, which is NOT always the case. It is also a stretch for traditional industrial or brand/graphic design firms to claim to be able to use "design thinking" to solve complex strategic issues. These firms need to go through a radical transformation and close a big capability gap before they can even attempt to implement it for others.

Today, "design thinking" is frequently compared and contrasted to business. This is often an over simplification that forces us into predetermined roles along with their associated rules, conventions, behaviors and formal expectations. It Is important to recognize that "design thinking" is NOT exclusive to designers or unattainable to those in another discipline. Design thinking is natural and inherent in all of us who are smart and creative.

"Design thinking" is a cognitive and intellectual process that balances the rational and emotional – in effect combining left brain and right brain thinking. When applied, it harmonizes with other modes of thinking and closes knowledge and information gaps, creating order and refining meaning. Because "design thinking" is a dynamic, constructive process that is iterative in nature, developing ideas requires ongoing definition, redefinition, representation and assessment.

To achieve those tangible outcomes, you need to open the process to multiple participants and socialize the process and outcomes, visualization is a very critical part of the process, not an outcome. Even the Department of Defence recognizes the needs to train "design thinkers" that are capable of critical and creative thinking to plan operations in dynamic environments with fast-changing uncertainties in extremely complex conditions.

People who are capable of using "design thinking" to identify and develop different military response options within the context of a big strategy are crucial to successful military operations. The development of such skills requires a shift in their focus from the operational and tactical environments to the strategic environment. This is an extremely challenging undertaking given that many military officers spend the majority of their career starting at lower levels and their advancement depends upon how well they perform tactically. This is very much like managers in large organizations who were promoted based on their ability to execute tactically.

To develop senior commanding officers with "design thinking" capabilities require DOF to train them new skills including analysis as well as synthesis. "Design thinkers" possess the ability to think critically on a "system" level; break concepts into simpler parts and mapping out their relationship and system impact before rearranging the elements into a new whole; in other words, to produce something through imaginative skills and quick experiments. And yes, imagination is always needed.

January 02, 2012

What is creativity? How does it happen? How do we prepare ourselves for it? Or can you at all? Do you have to be a whole-brain thinker, or do you only need the right side of your brain? Can you be rational and logical while being creative? I dedicated a whole issue of M/I/S/C/ to "Creativity" and this is now in bookstores in 25 countries.

Scott Adams, a popular cartoonist suggested, "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Mistake is part of anything and applied creativity is no exception, so I can be doing something uncreative and still makes mistakes.

Someone once suggested, “Creativity can never be achieved by imitations, and what is already been introduced.” That’s also not true. Some of the best creative pieces in science, art and engineering are results of imitations and experimentations. It is naïve to say creativity means not imitating.

Creative people usually have a few features that distinguish them from others. First, they posses both a rich body of domain-relevant knowledge and well-developed expressive skills (verbal, body movement or drawing or combination of all). Academics and creative managers like to describe creativity as a process, I think that is just nonsense. I belong to the school of Vinacke, which believes that creative thinking in the arts does not follow any models.

Gestalt philosophers like Wertheimer have also asserted that the process of creative thinking is an integrated line of thought that does not lend itself to the framework implied by the steps of a model. There is no process. It is your brain working. Despite that, many design or creative companies will tell you that they have a four-step process. Don’t be fooled: these are marketing constructs designed by marketers to make clients feel comfortable with what is essentially a messy, inscrutable phenomenon. Leave the boardroom and ask the creative department if they follow a process and you’ll get a very different answer. Or no answer at all.

Trying to reduce creativity to a linear process is counter-intuitive. Real creativity emerges from managed chaos and applied fuzzy logic. It’s never about careful calculations. It is something we will never be able to understand for a long time.

July 12, 2011

Just when I thought I can have 2 days in an office then I realized I have to be In NYC tomorrow for a few days. I am writing this post on a flight after missing my connection in Houston, and just finished teaching a three days Strategy graduate course with a focus on strategic innovation and design thinking. What I did was bringing the Harvard Business School case study method of teaching and apply it to design thinking and innovation, it is really interesting and probably an innovation itself because innovation means going against the conventional analytical thinking.

The shift from teaching competitive strategy to strategic innovation changes how the case studies were originally written for. I am using the same teaching material but instead applying atotally different pedagogical focus – which is how to avoid the very obvious and how to develop and apply ‘New Game’ in strategy making. It was intense for the students but they were liking it. I theorize, practice and teach these concepts and so for me, it is not academic, it is real.

Strategy is never that simple as picking the right competitive positioning, segments or competing on different dimensions. It is often complicated because it involves changing of mindset and mental models – mindsets that inspire individuals and teams to think imaginatively, to take risks, to seek out, and to expand the boundaries of a business or redefining customer value. It is hard.

Then there are structural, systems and processes for sharing of ideas, sense-making of data and working together. This includes developing new perspectives and collaborate on ‘white space mapping’ which was never taught at business schools. The very nature of competitive advantaged has changed and I challenged anyone who tell me if they really have a real and relevant competitive advantage that they thought they have.

The information revolution continues and is enabling companies to easily (and sometimes cheaply) match current competitive differentiators and rapidly create new ones. The result is that competitive advantage is evolving from simply focusing on differentiation, low cost or focus. The idea is to do all, the stuck in the middle can be a desirable position if you understand the underlying economic forces. Most business school students and even professors hardly understand how to apply the Five-Forces properly and let alone adapting it to a very different business environment where speed, empathy and community become key strategic elements in addition to bargaining powers and competitive dynamics. We need a new framework that takes into consideration the use of community in business strategy development. I’ve used cases including Method, Microsoft X-Box, Loco Motor and a few others to illustrate the concepts.

I think I should start developing teaching notes based on the original case study but with a different teaching emphasis. Classic views on strategy include Joseph Schumpeter focuses attention on innovation and entrepreneurialism. He suggested that bigger the company the more resources and diversification one can bring to R&D and as a result get better return on innovation. Michael Porter, following Alfred Chandler, focuses attention on business organization and competitive strategy and introduces the concept of cluster to explain competitiveness.

Today’s the nature of strategy and competitive advantage is drastically shaped by strategic innovation -- powered by customer co-creation; desire of consumer to change the status quo and powerful social innovation networks; integrates customer deep into business organization; demand chain into supply chain and contrasts inter-firm relations in terms of market, and closed or semi-closed and open-networks.

The attempt to develop competitive advantage is only the first step. It is sustaining the advantage that is far more challenging. How often companies invested millions and millions of dollars to create barriers for entry only to find out they lasted only for a short a few months. Waking up one morning seeing that your industry value chain was being reconfigured and the expiry date of your business model was last week is not exactly a fun thing. If you find that every six months you have to innovate on something the market will embrace is too exhausting, it is time to embrace design thinking.

June 26, 2011

For those of you who are not familiar with Muggles, they are people who are incapable of magic, and who are usually unaware of the wizarding world. Design Thinking is sort of like wizardries, it takes certain type of people with the certain type of training, Hogwarts or Harvard.

When Muggles think Design Thinking, they see nothing new there and they believe it has been around for a long time, it basically means they still don’t get it and may never will. They hardly see the real challenge, it is simply not to invent a better mouse traps. We care capable of doing more and being more innovative. The power of our imagaination is what it is.

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." ~J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 1999, spoken by the character Albus Dumbledore

Design Thinkin is alot more than lateral thinking and creativity de Bono style or ad agency style brainstorming. Design Thinking fills the gap created by management theories and business schools which analytical thinking and data-driven decision making override intuition where empathy is never part of the equation.

Companies have been battered by system level economic failure, extreme uncertainties, and the failure of traditional forms of strategic making, leadership styles and management model. These wounds have left businesses gazing hopefully towards Design Thinking. Design Thinking is bringing a refreshed, revitalized, and rejuvenated approach to management and strategic thinking- however, design thinking is far from a cure-all. It takes a certain type of people who are comfortable with different thinking styles. I’ve read so much poorly written papers about design thinking and many of them don’t even grab the basic principles and its true transformational power.

Often people talk narrowly about design and prototyping, but Design Thinking is not just bringing the power of empathetic creative problem-solving to bear on a human needs, it is an organization culture, a mindset, a framework and a toolkit to solve complex wicked problems that we created. It provides a balance between the needs to create customer value, shareholder return and social value. Design Thinking is strategic.

Everyone comes to me hoping to join Idea Couture claims they are creative, they have great ideas and can turn ideas into great products and create new markets. Go deeper and I ask the how… there comes the sound of silence. Great Idea, great products, great business is a tagline, not a strategy. Design Thinking can be applied to fill the gaps of traditional strategic thinking. The increasingly complex needs of the business need a new toolkit and Design Thinking is exactly what is needed. It helps to uncover new needs, creatively redefine value, reconfiguration of value-chain activities, develop compelling brand narratives and create markets that are yet to exist. When my friend Roger Martin advocates Design Thinking, he is not talking about ethnography or prototyping; he is talking about a whole new management paradigm.

Everything is designed—from behavior, systems, organizations to public policies. Design is universal. The dirty secrets of why how big corporations destroy shareholder value are actually no secrets. Everyone from the board of directors to the frontline employees knows 'why' a company is 'stuck.' Because their structures and management systems are so rigid and can’t adapt to changing market shifts or respond to any disruptions; their over focus on core competencies and optimization that prevent them to see beyond the core and; fail to see and anticipate the future and even if they see it they fail to act on it. This is where Design Thinking comes into play.

Everyone understands the need to make money and everyone hope they can do magic. And everyday many moguls are trying to create magic with cute packaging and fancy taglines and hoping to make a lot of money, off course it won’t work. The real magic lies in understanding deep human desire and unmet needs and anticipate emerging behavior, not every company truly understands how to do it. They teach those at the Ministry of Design Thinking.

June 19, 2011

I have always admired the work of Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons ( French for "like boys") designed by Rei Kawakubo. Both are similar and very different. Both operate at the intersection of fashion, art and architecture and it so happened that the output is fashion. I am a big minimalist fan although my lifestyle doesn't allow me to become one. After twenty years, I am still working on it. I am hopeless I guess. I am often distracted by other things and hard for me to stay true to it. May be this is the time.

I think this is the perfect time for minimalist thinking to become mainstream, not only in style but in minimlaist design thinking. We have been over thinking about many things. Most products are overdesigned and our life is overcomplicated. We want less and not more. And I am not talking about a watered down voluntary simplicity or sacrificing style or substance.

True minimalism is an highly intellectual exercise and a state of mind. The practice of minimalism is still primarily reserved to a small group of people in fashion, architecture and art (and i-bankers). I am in favor of mass adoption of minimalism as a philosophy. A simpler lifestyle and less complex.

I visited the lastest Yohji's exhibition at the Albert and Victoria Musem in London last week. A very small exibition but still worth visiting. His work is characterised by a frequent and skilful use of black, a colour which he describes as 'modest and arrogant at the same time. He is famous for his white shirts with subtle design. He believes that black is the only genuine colour (and white) and it's his essence.

The exhibition space houses about 60 creations and a multi-media timeline which reveals Yamamoto's wider creative output. Central to Yohji's work are the textiles. ‘Fabric’ he said once ‘is everything’. Each one of the fabrics used in his collections are made to his specifications by different craftspeople in and around Kyoto in Japan.

It seems the minimalist movement is making a comeback. The Japanese minimalist movement, which radicalised and democratised the fashion world in the early 1980s is creeping back and making a scene. Yohji needs to go mass. There is a stuborness for any haute couture house. His company filed for bankruptcy in 09, struggling under six billion yen (£40 million or US$65 million) of debt. I think Yohji needs to think out of the (black) box and reimagining about applying has philosophy and lifestyle outside fashion. I love to write more but have to go back to writing for the next issue of my magazine M/I/S/C. I am a week away from editorial deadline. 7 days a week is not enough for me, I need at least 12.